Perchance to Dream

I have completed a short story entitled Fantasia in C, which developed an irresistible life of its own while I wrote it. What I had expected to be short grew to nearly 14,000 words and 62 pages in length but what has been fascinating is the way in which I’d crawl inside the story from within my dreams. It is a love story told in the first person by a man who is 32 when it begins and 38 when it ends and in my dreams I have become that man and took on his persona and worldview. It has been both a joy and an affliction.

I find that my dreams are often vivid and so realistic that they become indistinguishable from the outer reality and I fail to comprehend them as dreams until I awaken – and even then sometimes, I need to awaken yet again in order to return to this plane.

Many years ago I remember John Lennon once said in an interview something to the effect that – who’s to say that our dreams are no less of a reality than that which exists when we awaken to the world? Who’s to say?

A dream, a nightmare, composing a story or novel at my computer: who’s to say which experience is any less real than the other? In my dreams I breathe, blood courses through my veins, I love, I desire, and often regret the inevitable awakening. In my nightmares I sweat, I fear, my heart races, my blood pressure increases, and I cherish that eventual awakening.

In the real world I waffle. On a good day I may loathe to let if slip away and fall asleep. On a bad day I am grateful to put it behind me for a good dream. Some days I simply need the rest and respite.

Fantasia in C is part of a series of short vignettes that I have written as part of a collection I have titled Tales from the South Bay, after the area I grew up in on the south end of the Santa Monica Bay. The stories blend personal history with fiction and have been a lot of fun to write: Ryan’s Fall, Seventeen, Museum Pieces, Northbound, and of course, Fantasia in C. It is my intention to self publish them through Amazon and other channels in the near future as soon as my editor (that’s my daughter) gets a break from her busy life.